The frames of apprehension of the past are heritages which the history use and criticize. Proclamation and revolt are common frames in the writing of history and in the political understanding that it disposes. The present Thesis focus on a production and a moment particularly good to criticize those frames: the reception of the Republic proclamation by the members of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro; when the expected future – the continuity of the Empire in a third reign – vanishes. At this moment of hesitation caused by the lost of the expected future, the past became the reference to understand the present. The words once used to write history became part of the voices about the present. The anarchy of the first years of the Second Reign seemed to be back to those who regretted the lost of D. Pedro II. At the same moment, other members of the IHGB could see the Republic by the same frame they understood the Independency: as a proclamation. Despite the conflict and tension between those receptions, they share one trait: the active life was understood without any need to engage with it. As proclamation the history was irresistible, the man where lead by the facts and not by their own actions. As anarchy the active life was just one more revolt, a blurred image without characters or density. However, the city claimed its life. As the opposite of the noise of the anarchy or the apathy of the proclamation, the vintém and the encilhamento happened outside the IHGB in the middle of an ongoing debate about an old object that started to became fundamental to the society: the money. If the members of the IHGB talked about proclamation and revolt, they realized the city changes, but they choose to stay apart, a position they shared with the civil governments of the Republic.